IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, February 21, 1952 – Copyright 2014, Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Olson and Steve Canyon embrace each other.
One of the things that I don’t mention in the book is how much Summer Olson probably had to do with the popularity of Miss Mizzou. Let me explain further.
Summer Olson was a character who first introduced into the strip on May 29th, 1949. She is introduced as Summer Smith, a secretary of Romulus Brandywine:
IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, May 29, 1949 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Smith is introduced as a secretary.
She was engaged to a pilot, Leyton Olson, who Steve Canyon was commanding over in Asia. By the end of that storyline, Leyton had disappeared on a mission that Canyon had sent him on, and was presumed dead. Summer Olson returns to the United States while pregnant with Leyton’s child.
Canyon of course feels bad about losing Leyton under his command, but he’s also concerned about the financial prospects for Summer Olson and her child. Steve reconnects with Olson and her son for an Air Force assignment in the states in a storyline in early 1952. Canyon eventually falls for Olson, and asks her to marry him on February 17th, 1952:
IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, February 17, 1952 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Steve Canyon asks Summer Olson to marry him.
Their plan to get married is foiled when Leyton Olson sends a telegram saying he’s coming to town. Spooked that her missing husband would show up after all this time, Canyon takes off for his next assignment. Eventually it turns out that the telegram was sent by Leyton’s father (Leyton Olson Sr.), so Canyon was spooked away for nothing.
Months pass while Canyon is attending to other air force assignments, but he eventually finds out about his mistake with Summer Olson and hopes to hurry to Chicago to try to marry her. On his way there, he’s delayed by the first Miss Mizzou adventure in the Canadian woods, which further complicates the situation between the couple.
Introducing marriage into the storyline would have raised a lot of interest in the strip in early 1952, and I’m thinking that interest brought a lot of readers to follow the Miss Mizzou adventure that fall as well. Canyon reconnects with Olson in the storyline after Miss Mizzou appears, so it’s likely that people were reading in anticipation to see what happened with the couple.
Spoiler Alert: They didn’t get married right away. When Canyon returns, Summer has just landed a high paying job with the ruthless industrialist Copperhead Calhooon. The Copperhead drives a wedge between the couple by making Summer work late hours, and their relationship cools.
IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, November 30, 1952 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Olson laments that she can’t afford to give up her job and settle down with Steve Canyon because she needs to support her son.
The couple did not get married until 1970. Mostly this was a choice based in dramatic effect; Caniff wanted Canyon to be freewheeling in his adventures so he could introduce various love interests along the way to keep audience interest high. But I think Caniff knew from the beginning that Steve and Summer were eventually going to marry, as this early exchange on June 5th, 1949 implies:
IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, June 5, 1949 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Smith get’s cheeky with Steve Canyon.